While I am not a Mac user, I know that many of CruTech’s readers are and I think about you all often while I keep my eye out for things that may help your lives as well.

I came across a list at Lifehacker (one of my favorite tech-blogs) of that seems to have a number of useful things that Macs are inherently are able to do. Here’s the list:

1. Say anything.
2. Show off Stacks and Expose in slow motion.
3. Activate screen corners.
4. Display custom hard drive icons.
5. Look up words in the dictionary with a keystroke.
6. Launch applications from Spotlight.
7. Tab between all controls.
8. Zoom WAY in on a page.
9. Show the date on the menubar.
10. Double as an external drive.

To see what all of these mean, head over to the post at Lifehacker (it would be rude/illegal for me to copy the entire content of their post).

To be honest some of these things don’t make any sense to me (what is Stacks and Expose?), some are just for “pretty” (the custom hard drive icons), but others seem way useful – looking things up, launching applications, tabbing between controls and doubling up a drive.

Here is my challenge to my Mac-lovers out there – tell me what you love about your Mac. Three things that I will not accept as good reasons are: they’re prettier (I agree), they run better (not always true), they don’t get viruses (neither does my Windows/Linux machine).

Even we nerds like our time off.

As summer approaches and as the assignments that come with it are soon upon us. I am going to plan on taking a breather on the updates here at CruTech.

I’ll still be posting things occasionally, but only those wonderful gems that I believe you will need to read even between trips to the boardwalk (if you’re on stateside summer project), the privy (if you’re on international summer project) or the library (if you’re doing IBS like me).

I’ll kick this thing back up when August rolls around, though I’m sure the first two weeks thing will steal some of that time too.

Have a wonderful summer!

I already shared a few weeks ago a short list of shortcuts that are useful in getting the most out of Windows. Before I share more, let me list some of the reasons I am a proponent of keyboard shortcuts:

1. It’s quicker.

That’s all.

Quite simply, you can work quicker as you learn and remember more and more keyboard shortcuts and as you work to make them a part of how you work. Think about this, how long would it take you to minimize every window you had open right now? I have 7 windows open right now, for me to go and hit the “minimize” bar on the top of each window would take about 6 seconds total, for me to hit the Windows key and the letter D together (Win+D) takes about 1/2 a second – tops. (I know that Macs have a Mouse Shortcut for this, which works very well indeed.)

Most people already know some keyboard shortcuts and they don’t even realize it, for example Ctrl+C for Copy, Ctrl+V for Paste, Ctrl+X for Cut, Ctrl+P for Print and Ctrl+S for Save. I’ve even mentioned F1 for the Help menu a couple of times.

Take a few minutes and peruse your menus in the programs that you have open. For example, under the File menu you’ll find options that look like the image to the left. Here you can see that Ctrl+T opens a new tab while Ctrl+W closes a tab.

One shortcut that is common to just about every Windows program is Alt+F4 which closes the program down. It works the same as hitting the button at the top right of the window.

Also, to switch programs you can hold down Alt and hit Tab (Alt+Tab) to file through the windows you have open rather than clicking the items on your taskbar. Ctrl+Tab works within a single program – say to switch between documents you have open in Word or tabs in Firefox.

I’ve found a number of lists of shortcuts that I want to list here. Check some of them out and take advantage as you gain more of your time to work (and a better control over your computer use).

• Common Windows Shortcuts
• Mac OS X Shortcuts
• 230+ Keyboard Shortcuts for Top Web Services
• Gmail Shortcuts – there is an option in Gmail to turn these on and off.
• Microsoft Word Shortcuts
• Microsoft Excel Shortcuts
• Microsoft Powerpoint Shortcuts

Links via [Lifehacker & Mashable]

Backward/Forward Compatibility

For anyone who uses Microsoft Office regularly to share information with other staff or students (both on PCs and Macs) you may have started to notice difficulties since Office 2007 came out. With the new Office release comes new standard file formats that are not backwards-compatible with older versions.

In Word .doc has become .docx, in Excel .xls has become .xlsx, etc., and this has caused quite a few difficulties. In reality these changes are a step forward for Microsoft as these document formats are becoming the standard for these types of documents and are readable by more programs that are not specific to Microsoft.

Fellow staff Kendall passed on a message from Todd Johnson to make me aware of a patch that is available for those of you who have older versions of Office so that you can open, read and edit these newer formats. I poked around on the Microsoft site a bit and came across it here (unfortunately the problem is for both Macs and PCs, but the solution is Windows only):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466

Follow the instructions on the page to get it for yourself, make sure you read the system requirements (basically if you have an older version of MS Office or even just PowerPoint viewer it will work).

Note to Mac Users: I did look for a similar update for the Mac versions of MS Office, I couldn’t find anything. If any of you know where this would be comment below and I will make sure I update you all on it.

Saving as a PDF from Office 2007

If you’re one of the up-to-date few that already have Office 2007 running on your machine there is now another (and better) option for getting your files into PDF format. Dave commented on the last PDF post and shared the link there. It is also an update from Microsoft itself:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4d951911-3e7e-4ae6-b059-a2e79ed87041

This update is only for Microsoft Office 2007, it will not work with older versions or with other programs. If you still want to be able to “print to PDF” from other programs besides MS Office (or if you are running and older version) head back to the post on PDF-ing your documents and download CutePDF from there.

Over the past few weeks I’ve (with the help of a friend or two) posted about a lot of things that I know about. Now, don’t get worried – I still have plenty of ideas to carry me through. At the same time I want this site to be useful to you, the reader. So, please, take some time and hit the “comments” link and answer a few questions for me:

1. How has the “tech depth” of the posts been so far?
   • Too deep – I don’t get it.
   • Just right – I’m learning how to swim.
   • Too lite – I could have written these.
2. What would you like me to post about in the near future?
3. Is there any other feedback you want to give me?

WHY? Focus on the web updates you really want to digest while skipping or saving others for later makes you more effective.

Now that you are motivated to receive updates from your favorite websites and you know how to get updates all in one place, let’s talk about how to make streamline your online experience even more by using Google Reader well.

Viewing Options

There are a few ways to have your web updates displayed in Google Reader. One option is deciding how the items are to be displayed. One is called “List View” and the other is “Expanded View”. You’ll find the tabs to change the view on the right side of the site.

List View allows you to see the items in one line. It’s like only seeing the subject of an email. Unread items are in bold and are typically unbolded to show you read items. Expanded View allows you to see some or all of the content.

The other option is to decide if you want all of the items from a website listed (read and unread) or if you only want to see what you have not read. You make this choice by clicking on one of the options on the left side of the site.

Organizing Your Updates

If you are only subscribed to a few updates then organizing them may not be of great concern to you. But if you are like me and subscribe to many (over 200 for me!) updates, it will be more effective to get some control over them!

You can add a tag (or folders) each update feed with as many tags as you like. I use several like “friends”, “business”, and “fun”. I have several others I use as well.

One trick I use is to double-tag my favorite updates as “top”. This way when I’m running short on time or I just want to read the “best of the best” as determined by me, I can just click on the “top” tag or the + button beside it to show which ones are updated. When I read one in the “top” tag and it’s also tagged “friend”, for example, that update will be marked as read in both.

You can also drag and drop the entire tagged set of items so it doesn’t have to be in alphabetical order as you can see in my example. This also works for individual feeds as well.

One last bit of customization in how new items are displayed is by choosing to show only the feeds that have an update or show them all even if there are no new updates. I like to have Google Reader only show me what is updated. This keeps the list a lot cleaner.

Save and Share Your Favorites

At the bottom of every update item are several options you can do with that particular update. Let’s look at each

Adding a star will save that particular update in Google Reader. I use this all the time if I want to save an item or come back and read it later. You are able to access all starred items at once using the top-right menu (see below).

Pressing the Share button creates a blog of just those items you choose. People can then visit that site (or subscribe) to see what you are finding interesting.

If you want to send that item to a friend, you can use the email button to do so.

You have the option to keep an item marked as “read” or “unread”.

You can also edit the tags for that item.

In the top-left corner of Google Reader you will find several choices you can make. Though it’s first on the page, I saved it for last because some of these choices make more sense while you are reading your updates.

One interesting link is the “Trends” link that lets you see some basic statistics about what feeds you are reading, who’s updating frequently or infrequently, etc.

And to round out the options, Google Reader will collect your friend’s shared items in one place. To configure how that works, click on the “manage friends” link.

If you’d like to watch a video about how a guy named Robert Scoble can sift through over 600 web updates, check this video out!

You can also learn some new tips (like keyboard shortcuts) and basics from the Google Reader FAQ page.

What experiences have you had using Google Reader more effectively?

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Editor’s Note: This post is the final part of our “RSS Awareness Week” Festivities. It was originally written by Rob Williams for his website 170spoons.com and is copied here with his permission. Thank you very much Rob!